Punjab Police have hired a former technology head at Amazon Internet Services as their chief technology officer (CTO) in an attempt to boost the technological resources and know-how of the state police.
Dhruv Singhal has been hired to train the force to deal with tech-savvy and data-driven criminals. It may be noted that the lockdown and curfew in the past two months have brought the state police face to face with criminals, especially the cross border terrorists, using highly sophisticated technology and equipment like drones to smuggle arms, phones, cash and drugs across the Indo-Pak border.
According to DGP Dinkar Gupta, factors like hostile conditions at the border increased deployment of drones to smuggle drugs and weapons into Punjab, and increased cyber frauds over last few months made it imperative to scale up the force’s technology thrust.
“The criminals and terrorists are upgrading their technical know-how with every second. If we have to stop them, we have to match up to their technical knowledge and assets and so the force needs to scale up the conventional policing and investigation techniques. Dhruv Singhal has vast experience and would advise, assist and support the development of an overall vision, strategy and technology road map for the extensive use of technology, including IT, in the police department. He will be responsible for helping to boost efficiency and effectiveness in the functioning of the department and enable more seamless citizen-eccentric services”, said DGP Gupta.
Singhal served for more than 30 years in IT industry and his last assignment was as head of technology at Amazon Internet Services, the Indian subsidiary of Amazon Web Services. Singhal graduated from IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta and specialises in application integration, databases, and big data among others.
